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MOSCOW, Sept 22 (Reuters) - Gazprom said onThursday it had discovered a new gas deposit during explorationat the Kirinskoye field in the Sea of Okhotsk near Russia'sSakhalin island.
The field is crucial for Gazprom's plans to raise liquefiedgas production at its Sakhalin-2 plant on the island. It has notdisclosed the reserves of the newly discovered deposit.
Shell, which also has a stake in the LNG plant, mayalso get a share in the Kirinskoye field as part of an assetswap deal with Gazprom, though the prospects for this areuncertain because of international sanctions for Russia's rolein the Ukraine crisis. These bar Western companies fromdevelopment of deep-sea gas deposits in Russia and from some oilfields as well.
In 2015, the United States restricted exports, re-exportsand transfers of technology and equipment to theYuzhno-Kirinskoye field, part of the wider Kirinskoye deposit.
Gazprom Deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev told the ReutersRussia Investment Summit last week that Gazprom had not yetchosen which assets it wanted to swap under its deal with Shell.
The Sakhalin-2 plant, which currently produces 10 milliontonnes of LNG per year, is due to add another 5 million tonnesof LNG to allow Russia to come closer to its target of 5 percentof the global LNG market. (Reporting by Polina Devitt; Writing by Denis Pinchuk andVladimir Soldatkin. Editing by Jane Merriman)
